I know I'm clumsy. I've known this for the majority of my life. However I was not aware that my clumsiness had reached a level on par with bad sitcom humor.

I'm sitting in my wing back chair with the laptop on my knees and watching the cat on the table beside me. He's batting at my cell phone and a pen.

Smack!

They land on the floor. I leave him the pen to bat at and lean over to look for the cell phone. I think it went under the chair.

I lean a little further over. Where is it? And lean some more.

And fall headfirst from the chair in a heap on the floor with a laptop, a startled cat and a pen.

The cell phone was indeed under the chair. At least I was right about that.

"This is more embarrassing than the time you started cleaning your beans at Don Knotts' Christmas party."

Yup, Fred - that ascot wearing blonde bimbo from Scooby Doo - said it right this time.

I'm doing better and I feel like I should probably get back to a routine of sorts. One way to do that is to start blogging again.

So, let's start with Batman - I saw that movie last night and it was phenomenal. Then again, I've always been a freaky comic book fan anyway. Still, it's nice to see Batman actually have to deal with a bit more of a realistic criminal situation other than "Oh no, that strange criminal is going to slap this person with a heavy object that will only slightly injure them. Where oh where is someone to help?"

I got one of my mother's bird feeders from my dad recently and I hung it up on the balcony. It immediately attracted birds...and a squirrel. After a battle royale to keep the squirrel away from the feeder and happily munching on the dropped remains, I found I had developed amused affection at a rodent that can snub his nose at a cat twice his size and a German Shepherd two feet away from him and separated only by a thin partition of glass. End result - the squirrel gets a bowl of my almonds and other nuts that I eat along with a water bowl. Since my balcony is already heaped up with plants galore, the little beast is in high rise heaven and I have yet again reaffirmed my suspicions that I'm a soft hearted sap.

As for the cat attacks - the previous cat mentioned earlier in this post has taken a liking to sleeping under the covers.

And then awakening in a fury of teeth and claws that poke me in the tuckus every few seconds until I squeal and wake up.

Then he does it again.

There is nothing quite like waking up at six in the morning two days in a row to a bunch of cat claws latching onto your bum.

I'm at my parents' house and a thunderstorm is starting to build over us. I can hear the rumblings and grumbles of the storm. It will more than likely be a doozy of a storm.

Yesterday, my Mom passed away. She slipped away while in her sleep, having never awoken from her unresponsive state that began on Saturday.

Did I tell her everything I wanted to? Of course not. But I tried, I did try. Every minute that passes I think of another quadrillion things that I want to whisper in her ear, that I want to laugh and giggle over while I sit on the counter and she sips her coffee.

My mother was amazing, especially when it came to accepting and supporting and loving me for all my quirks. I had this habit since childhood of sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter while we chattered away. We talked about everything and anything. Good God, I loved her. I still do.

For all the highs and glories of love, it comes with a hard price when our mortality is realized. I'll pay that price and I'll pay it again and again as I remember her.

She loved Christmas. She would deck the house out in lights, trees, figurines, little stockings on the fireplace, dangling colored beads from the ceiling fans. You name it, it was up in our house. We would start our shopping early and would laugh and giggle as we stocked the presents high up under the tree. More and more and more. The best part of Christmas, Mom and I agreed, was buying presents for our family and waiting in breathless anticipation for them to get to open them. And, of course, teasing them mercilessly until they could.

Mom could kill a plant by looking at it a long time ago, but one day it all changed. Her black thumb went green in the blink of an eye and the house was filled with plants. It was a forest in here. My apartment is a forest now. Over the years, I filled it with a myriad of plants. It was something, one thing of many, that we shared.

The plants are sparse here at my parents' now. They died and left as Mom's illness and pain progressed. But the one's that remain are being tended with a deep loving care from my father.

I stayed here with him last night. He went to bed early and I sat up in the living room. I watched Aliens (I haven't seen it in years and it's a good movie!) while I clutched a stuffed dog that my Mom owned (out of remembrance of her and also for the scary scenes).

My parents had separate rooms - not because they didn't love each other, but honestly because my father snores like a train with sleep apnea. I found him in Mom's room. Dad was curled up on her side of the bed, the blanket I had given her during her hospital stay over his shoulders. The television in her room was on, tuned to Cartoon Network - Mom always watched the t.v. on low sound until she drifted to sleep.

I'm up and down and a myriad of different directions at once. I sent her an email this morning. Maybe there's email in Heaven. But, I could never tell her all the things I want to tell her - not in one sitting. It would take years and years of continuous nonstop talking (something I am probably capable of doing).

The funeral is Thursday. The interment of her remains on Friday.

While I was outside, I was standing under the trees in the back yard where we used to put a hammock out in the summer. The radio was on in my father's shed. I had put it on 101.5, a local station that plays mainly some soft rock, etc. The channel grumbled and switched to piano music. It switched again to an oldies song. I can't remember the song entirely. Then it switched again to an 80's station and the song with the lyrics "No one is to blame" came on. The chorus repeated until the end of the song. The station switched again to jazz. Then again to another oldies song, something that said "stay a little while". This happened in less than five minutes in rapid succession.

The dogs keep jumping up and running out of the house, barking and wagging their tail at the gate. But there is no one in the drive way. They have run, tail between their legs, from the back bathroom twice. And have stood, stock still, in the middle of the yard staring into space at the back gate or standing in front of the back deck and barking once, pausing, barking once, pausing.

It's a doozy of a storm that's coming. From the look of the radar it might match the one I'm having internally at the moment. Rain is good for cleansing the earth. Maybe it'll do the same for me.

Regardless, I have a bunch of Mom's yarn. She loved to crochet and I do too. So I get to continue what she started and feel her as I work.

The world is different now. It looks different. Feels different.

I keep expecting her to pop in her in the computer room and ask if I've ate yet today. Or start vacuuming right when an interesting part of a movie comes on television.

I hope she knows I love her.

I am an addict. Now, for those of you that are preparing yourselves for a goofy post or want to continue reading out of morbid delight in hearing about sleepless nights of withdrawal in gutters, you're in the wrong place today.

My addiction is something that I can operate around, that allows me to lead a normal and productive life, and is even easily supported by and helps support communities and individuals. Even though I fight against this addiction (and win more often than not most days), it is always here. It will always be here.

Cigarettes.

Because of cigarettes, my mother is lying in the hospital in an unresponsive state. She is dying. The morphine has taken away her pain and for that I am grateful. For the first time in two years I think she has reached a place that doesn't cause her agony at every waking moment. It does not haunt her sleep and dog her footsteps.

For 9 days I have been at the hospital nonstop, with only a brief break for an hour or two to step away and collect myself. Last night, finally, my body and mind could not take any more and I collapsed for ten hours of sleep at home. Regardless of not wanting to, my body refused to continue.

I have cried. I have raged. I have prayed and wished and hoped and pleaded for a miracle. I have even tried to bargain with the forces that be to take some of my time on earth and give to her. Eventually, you can only accept and that is the hardest thing I have ever done. But accepting does not mean that the tears and pain have left. It does, however, on some level help me come to terms with what I can and cannot do for her.

It hurts to see her lying there. Her body is slowly slipping away, her vitals dropping with each hour, but slowly, so slowly. I saw her today for four hours and stepped back away to come home because I needed to release emotions away from the hospital, away from her ears so she does not feel any negativity from me.

When I am with her, I talk to her. I tell her about everything I have ever loved about her, about our lives together, our activities. I laugh. I kiss her. I hold her hand. I hug her gently so as not to hurt her body, her unresponsive body, because the cancer has wasted away at her flesh until all that is left is bones and fluid. Her skin weeps at the slightest touch beyond a careful clasp or fingertip stroke.

It's easy to brush aside cigarettes with a contemptible wave or flick of the fingers in the realm of addictions. Cigarettes don't leave the addict convulsing on the floor, clawing at the walls and hallucinating throughout withdrawal. Cigarettes are not seedy and dark, placing the addict in extreme situations of inhumanity. You do not see many people that put themselves on the street to hook for cigarette money and cigarette money alone unlike with other drugs.

But it is a drug. And it is an addiction. The effects are merely take longer to feel and witness.

Cancer, emphysema. To continue with life attached to an oxygen tank, to feel each breath as a stab in the chest and throat. The activities lost forever. I knew a woman once that had smoked for so long that even after she quit, she could no longer ride a bicycle. She couldn't get enough air to peddle continuously, even on a flat surface.

I have watched this addiction slip in, settle comfortably on the couch and take away my grandmother and mother, slowly, subtly, painfully.

Cigarette addiction is something is that is frowned upon in society currently, but the drug itself is still easily available. There are many support groups for addicts available locally for specific drugs, but it is still difficult to find one for cigarette smoking alone. A group that isn't an impersonal 800 line.

I have gone weeks, days, months, almost a year without smoking. The amount of time always varies. It is an insidious beast because of its availability. At any time I can slip into a store and purchase a pack. At any time I can tap someone on the shoulder and polite ask to "bum" one. It is everywhere even though society is trying to slowly weed it out. It persists and the little beast that every addict has, regardless of substance or activity, preys on that.

To me, an addiction is literally like another entity that sits inside of me. It takes a lot to silence the bastard and no amount of duct tape can do the job for long. It bids its time, waiting.

Have you ever been stalked or perhaps watched a show in which someone or some animal has? That is an addiction. It first erupts into a fury of rage at being denied, but eventually subsides over time and willpower. Then it lingers. Like the victim of a stalker, you go about your day and you know that you're being watched. Over time, the feeling fades a bit and your shoulders relax more until you barely recall the sensation. This is the moment I fear when I don't smoke (and right now, I don't) because it's here that the beast sneaks up and bites again.

"Just one cigarette won't matter. I haven't smoked in months. I can control it now."

It feels like being a puppet. Someone strings you along, throws some lines into your head and out of your mouth from a tarnished script. Persuasive words on some levels. Easy words. Excuses. And every addict wants that excuse, that reason to fall back on when asked by others or themselves "why". Why did you go back again? You were doing so well.

"I had a rough day, such a rough day. Just tonight."

"It's just one cigarette, one pack. I'll quit again tomorrow."

"What does it matter, anyway? I've done it for so long already."

"Gonna die anyway." I never used that excuse, but I've heard it plenty and it makes me so angry. Do not say this until you have watched someone you know and love wither before your eyes, disappear into a chasm of unrelenting pain because of this damnable drug. Death is a path we all take, but the agonizing process it takes because of cigarettes is unspeakable and should not be taken lightly.

The frantic washing of hands, mouthwash, perfume while you try and erase the scent of it from your skin and breath so no one notices.

Much like smoking, alcohols beast is just as persistent. I come from a large extended family. With Irish, German, Scottish, and Cherokee, my family is bred to drink. I say that mainly in jest, but partially not. I was lucky in that I noticed when I started liking that little bite of liquor or other alcoholic drink too much.

"I can't wait to get home and grab a [insert here]."

Thank goodness I cut that off quick. Cigarettes, strangely, helped me in that regard. I noticed early on the signs because I have the same ones for smoking. Now, I don't drink. Ever. Ever, ever. And, thankfully, I don't want to. Nick of time.

But that damnable beast still holds cigarettes over my head because I didn't catch it in time.

As children and even as adults, we have a desire to fit in. There are even psychology terms for it. Multitudes, actually. Normative social influence - an urge to conform to seek the approval of others. Informational social influence - to conform because you want to be right. The list goes on. Essentially we, as people, find ourselves always getting stuffed into particular groups to define ourselves, to find meaning and assurance in our lives and actions. It is through our social identity that we determine, on some levels, who we are, who we relate to, our opinions and goals. Please, note that I say this only on some levels. On others, obviously, we are individuals, unique and capable of introversion.

The point of my mention for social identity is that there are always going to be groups out there that partake in whatever activity (crack, cigarettes, LSD, violence, rape, etc) that will assist in providing a fertile ground for addiction to persist, to continue with its needed excuses and avenues of entry into the lives of addicts. You can't escape it, especially cigarettes - sold in every gas station or grocery store, smoked on every corner outside, dramatized and elegantly recaptured in movies and television shows.

The worst part is that the results of this particular drug (whose components include many different drugs including DDT, a horrifying pesticide that was outlawed in several countries - USA as well - because of the damage it reaps over the environment). It takes years, decades for the consequences of smoking to become apparent and they are horrifying.

Emaciation from tumors, chemotherapy, radiation. The sickness, the weakness. The helpless frustration. It doesn't hurt just the addict. Like all consequences of drug use, it hurts everyone that also cares about the addict. Little by little, that person is eaten away, consumed by the consequences of their addiction until they are little more than a shell of themselves.

The actions of the past cannot be changed. Remorse and anger, frustration and exasperation over the past is useless, hurtful and unnecessary. But the past teaches. Why else are the elderly revered (and in many cases SHOULD be revered)? Because they have a long past, ripe with lessons learned from observation and experience.

Do not hate the past, but accept it and learn from it. Don't live in the past. Live now. And don't live in the future because then you'll always be looking forward and never realize where you're at.

I may only be an addict for cigarettes, but it has taught me to live day by day. Today, I have not smoked. The day isn't over, but so far I have not smoked and that's great. I do that for everything now, acknowledge what I have accomplished for the day as I'm doing it - not after, not before.

I wrote this because I felt that I needed to, not for any other reason. I'm posting it only because I think maybe some can relate, maybe someone will even realize something with it. I'm not a professional or a therapist or anything along those lines. I just needed a moment to vent aloud, to explain things to myself.

Mom, I love you.

I'm pretty sure that late in life I'm going to battle vehemently with my kitchen. Currently in life it tempts me with yummy goodness and baked goods of which I cannot possibly resist and still call myself human.

I think it does this because it's on a secret mission to kill me. By 'it', I mean, of course, my kitchen.

As we all know from the news, America has a serious obesity problem. They say it's because Americans are lazy and gluttonous. But, they're wrong. I have uncovered the true story.

It began in 1911 when a seemingly innocent contraption for keeping food cold was sold for the first time. It was called a refrigerator. The refrigerator had a first cousin as well. Family and friends called it a freezer.

What started out as a helpful invention for mankind quickly took on immense and demonic proportions hitherto unknown to Earth! People began storing food, lots of food and instead of eating in a timely manner, they stuffed their mouths full every second of the day until they had to get a second job to afford their grocery bill.

Why?

Yes, that is the question America asks. "Why."

Let me tell you.

From the cold depths of space an asteroid plummeted to earth twenty years before the first refrigerator was sold. The asteroid landed on the frozen tundra of Miami where it released its hideous passengers - an army of bright green and white metallic boxes that snapped their drawers open and shut in a rather rude way that frightened the local wildlife.

The mammoths were terrified and leaped off a cliff to brave the harsh Atlantic for safer shores. And that's why we don't have mammoths in Miami now, but that's another story.

The alien boxes clacked and clanked, shook and vibrated, hummed and hissed until they had carefully reviewed the plan that had been put together before they had ever waddled a peg onto the asteroid.

They were going to take over America.

Once infiltrated into the homes of Americans, the "refrigerators" and "freezers" began sending out subliminal messages to the humans that made them come and eat voraciously.

Soon, the "refrigerators" and "freezers" beget hideous offspring and called them "retail managers". They were a terrifying cross between the alien life forms and the dredges of rotten food left in the depths of every cooling box, capable of developing sentience if left unattended for several years.

These so called retail managers began to advertise more and more food, bigger and larger meals, fatter and more comfortable couches. "Why walk when you can roll?" They said over the airways and the brainwashed masses listened. They ate and ate and ate.

To what end, you may ask.

Well, you see, it's the Great American Squirrel that started it all. After learning space travel, the G.A.S. (as it is commonly called in circles that are In The Know) began colonizing the planets of nearby stars.

Soon, they came upon a strange planet. A cold planet. A metallic planet.

...A planet with really poor interior decorating.

"What an eyesore!" The G.A.S. exclaimed loudly to one another and all agreed it would be best to merely kersplode the planet.

Kersploding is similar to exploding, but much different.

With explosions you get bits flying here and there and all about willy nilly with a big sound like "pow" or "pop" or "kapow bam bam bitty bit bam!"

With kersploding you get bits flying here and there and all about willy nilly with a big sound like "piffle" and the scent of bad eggs.

Kersploding is a grievous insult to a planet. Or a country, town, state, or even a person. It's also been known to be a part of urban warfare - the practice of slipping beneath the sheets followed by the actions that bring about the phrase "silent but deadly" - this too has it's roots in kersploding techniques.

As I was saying, the Great American Squirrels kersploded the planet. The occupants were rocketed into space and a trillion gazillion miles an hour followed closely by the sound "piffle" and reeking of bad eggs.

The refrigerators and freezers floated across space, trying hard not to smell one another, and contemplated their revenge.

This, by the way, explains why every refrigerator (even the brand new ones) always seem to have this strange ... vaguely detectable odor of ... rotten something. No matter how much you clean, bleach and search for it you simply can't get rid of it. It's the mark of the great kersplosion of 1825. Their shame. Their reason for revenge (aside from the decimation of their entire planet).

So, they infiltrated the planet Earth and made all the Americans fat (but left the other countries alone, though they did enjoy the sights of Europe and Asia and thus go there to vacation).

"Roll, roll!" Said the retail managers and gave the Americans huge vehicles with giant tires and terrible gas mileage (the last not intentional at first until the refrigerators struck a deal with an oil company and got a ten percent kick back).

The Americans rolled. They rolled here and there, up and down hills and mountains. Their automobiles were so large they couldn't see the road unless it was a mile in front of them.

Millions of rodents were squashed beneath the tires of the rolling fat Americans.

Many of them G.A.S.

The refrigerators and freezers laughed and laughed. They were enacting sweet revenge.

The G.A.S. took to taunting the rolling automobiles. They would run into the road and stare it down, swerving at the last second while hoping to disable the vehicle by terrorizing its occupant into smashing into a guard rail.

This war continues today.

Say "no" to war. Don't become an unwilling participant. Start jogging today and buy a Prius.